Submitted 3 weeks ago by Allero@lemmy.today to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Is there any reason, beyond corporate greed, for SMS messages to cost so much?
If I get it right, an SMS message is just a short string of data, no different from a message we send in a messenger. If so, then what makes them so expensive? If we’d take Internet plans and consider how much data an SMS takes, we should pay tiny fraction of a cent for each message; why doesn’t that happen?
SMS are completely free? I mean yeah, they cost money back in 2009, but that was a loooooong time ago.
Wherever you are, you’re being completely screwed, yeah.
They aren’t free in Canada.
Yes they are? I guess maybe not up north but in every province they sure are
Most plans other than the absolute bottom contain effectively unlimited SMS.
Beyond corporate greed, there is none. SMS’ are even sent as part of routine packets on the cellular network so they don’t even take extra data. Carriers might pay extra for inter carrier routing, but again the cost associated with that is mostly corporate greed.
As far as I could understand, North American carriers charged through the nose for mobile data for the longest time, but usually bundled SMS with some plans in some form, be it a set number of messages, or unlimited nights/weekends (oof, I don’t feel younger typing that one out). In most of the rest of the world, data became cheaper faster, but SMS was/is still expensive. This, combined with iPhone’s popularity in NA making people use iMessage, led to a lot of people just sticking to the defaults and use SMS on one side of the Atlantic, while the rest used WhatsApp or similar.
Pretty much, it was still expensive at though. I got my first cellphone in 1999 with Fido. Probably paid something like 50$ month and that came with like 100 texts messages.
I quit with WhatsApp when Meta acquired it.
There was potential legislation and a lot of congressional probes in the mid-late 2000’s in the US that essentially forced cellular carriers to publicly admit that it cost next to nothing on their end to send SMS messages(like 10^-7^¢ per message) yet they charged insane premiums for them of 20¢ per message. This ended up being the catalyst for US carriers dropping most SMS charges to stay competitive while the rest of the world just changed over to alternate messaging services to avoid the fees instead like you said.
Wait, I haven’t paid for text messages in probably 15 years. Where do they still charge for SMS? It’s usually unlimited with any plan that I’ve seen
I think my phone plan (in Japan) charges for outgoing SMS. I don't think it's much. I think some plans maybe include it. We all use LINE here (like much of Europe uses Whatsapp) so most people aren't sending text messages regularly if at all.
Pay-as-you-go is still popular in poorer markets, more rural areas or even in pro-competitive markets. It’s only particularly scummy markets that force customers to use their credit within a certain time period so for those who only rarely call/text and have consistent access to wifi, even 5-10 dollars worth of credit can last a year or more. Extremely consumer-friendly.
Yeah, I’m within the reach of wifi almost constantly. Only need to call or send an SMS very rarely, so I’m quite happy to just have credit as backup. I get the feeling my provider would really love to get me on some monthly plan, but that ain’t happening if I can help it.
Really basic plans still charge you. When I was in school, my parents gave me a dumb phone with a plan that cost 10 cents per minute of calling or 10 cents per sms. MMS didn’t even work. Ridiculously expensive, but at the amount I was using still cheaper than anything else
All plans include unlimited talk and text.
The last phone I ever had that dinged me for SMS messages was the tracfone I owned when that was all I could afford. I think that might have been like a decade or so ago? Maybe closer to 15 like you were saying.
Assuming you’re in UK or Ireland, most of the world still pays for SMS.
Not in the US. Smartphones killed that shit.
But there was a time where people did the math, and SMS was more expensive than what it costs NASA to get data from the Hubble.
Not in Poland either
Most of EU don’t pay for sms either
Where are you that you’re paying anything extra for sms? They used to be expensive because they could charge that much, now that are included in even the cheapest prepaid plans. If you are paying per message, that’s a you problem and you need to find another wireless provider.
There is a large contrast in this regard between NA and Europe. In Europe data is dirt cheap and wifi is usually available anyways so messaging over whatsapp/signal/whatever is much more common than trying to use SMS. In America public wifi is extremely rare and businesses are so spread out that coverage is limited… people also tend to use iPhones which default you into their shitty iMessage - SMS was also traditionally much cheaper so it’s more of a habit in NA.
None of that is actually true as a contrast.
There are tons of free wifi networks from hotels to restaurants, etc.
None of what you are saying makes any sense.
GSM SMS protocol is the same on both continents. The reason SMS became free in the US with 4G, was an attempt to level competition for cell phones that weren’t iPhone, since the iMessage protocol uses data transmission rather than SMS. Now Android uses RCS, which is also data transmission, and the only use for SMS is Android to iPhone texting and dumb phones.
If you need to send SMS commercially they’re still generally priced at $0.03 each. I just had to deal with that because some users will apparently only turn on MFA if they can get the codes by txt.
OP didn’t clarify personal versus business. I’m aware of how much businesses get ripped off, I’ve looked into using the short codes for promoting my own business and shit is not cheap.
I considered setting up a raspberry pi with a 4g hat because of that.
I spend about £15 per year on my phone. No way that could be beaten with a contract. I’m still annoyed at how expensive it is though
Where did I say anything about a contract? I spend $1800/year for 4 lines, 3 personal and 1 work line. In the USA at least, prepaid beats postpaid/contract every day of the year. Every time I price moving all 4 lines over to postpaid to get easier access to esims, a little leeway on payment, etc, I always end up staying with prepaid.
SMS piggybacks on existing signals to and from your phone. They are entirely free, and have been in a lot of places for a long time.
You’re getting screwed. At least it’s a good reason for your contacts to switch to signal or simpleX?
This isn’t really true anymore. Originally it was and because SMS was rarely used it was effectively free. But then it grew more popular to the point where most messages didn’t have “unused bandwidth” to piggyback on and had to be sent separately. Now days all traffic is basically data traffic and SMS isn’t hiding in some unused space.
That being said it is still so close to free that it doesn’t really matter. Sending 140 bytes of low-priority data is a rounding error.
Huh, TIL. Thanks!
Unlimited SMS is on most cell phone plans nowadays, at least in Canada.
On a slightly different tack: I run a website, and I choose not to implement SMS for notifications - only email. Email is free. Adding SMS, even at $0.007 per message, could add up to big bucks.
Where I live I haven’t seen non unlimited SMS or calls on normal plans in forever.
What are you paying for SMS? I pay 6 euro a month for unlimited sms and calls and 2 GB data. 50+ mobiel is my provider. Now they offer my plan with the first year for 2,5 euro. Dirt cheap.
Around 0,03 euro per SMS - not huge, but when someone contacts you via SMS, money disappear quickly.
Yeah, I drop the equivalent of 16€ and I get 60GB data and unlimited calls and SMS with my Danish provider. Having to pay for SMS is purely corporate greed.
What about sending sms to other countries though? I have free domestic sms but pay like 0.20€ for international (within EU).
Sending an SMS as an operation is just as expensive as checking for signal. Which every phone is constantly doing.
I know it doesn’t help, but Europeans have always been amazed how much you guys were charged for SMS. Even in 1999, over here messages cost a fraction of what you were charged - that you pay for them at all these days is just mind-boggling.
Who were you texting in 1999? Cell phones weren’t very common then.
Probably me on my Nokia 5110.
I started university in 1999. Pretty much everyone had a mobile phone there. They were fairly new, granted, but they were pretty ubiquitous.
I was late getting a flip phone, but I did in 02. Everyone else I knew already had mobile devices.
They were called pagers back then.
They’re in Russia. I don’t know anybody in the US (I assume you’re talking about) who pays for SMS.
American profit seeking at its finest
They aren’t the cost was arbitrarily chosen 30 odd years ago and hasnt changed in all that time despite there being several free alternatives. Data usage doesnt cost what they charge either. Its all a scam.
I didnt know SMS is expensive. I know it was but i thought it was free nowadays.
When you say free, as in totally free that you can send and receive anytime even without a plan? Or you mean free because it is already included in your prepaid or postpaid plan?
Free as in: unlimited calls and texts are included in pretty much all but the most bargain bin plans nowadays.
I was looking for a new cell provider a couple months ago, and I honestly don’t recall even seeing a plan that didn’t come with unlimited talk and text.
Outside of the legally required 911 you’re not getting anything for 100% free from a carrier, because why would they?
Are they? I have plans in both the UK and France, and I think they’re both unlimited sms. Not expensive plans, I think the UK one is £7 for unlimited sms, unlimited calls and 20gb of data (which is more than I use).
7 euros for 20gb of data? I’m paying close to $30 a month for 1 gig and if I cross that the bill shoots up to $40 Fucking American Capitalism.
I pay $170/ month for two phones in the States. I wouldn’t say that SMS is free, but I can send an unlimited amount of messages with that plan.
Holy hell. Sure, I bought my phone (a OnePlus 9) out of pocket but I pay about 20 USD for unlimited calls and SMS with 5Gb of data per month (I can also save unused data from each month to the other up to 15Gb). This is in Sweden for reference.
85 per phone? did you get suckered into a contract+new “free” iPhone or something? I pay 40/mo for unlimited everything in the States but could be paying 25-30 if I wanted to switch providers.
SMS message costs are a scam, always have been. It takes like 1-2 seconds worth of talk time for the same amount of sending a text.
Holy smokes that’s expensive :D 85 bucks per phone per month
If you’re paying for SMS then it’s only because there are enough people like you. Sending email is free, or using Facebook or Instagram messaging, those are also free. If companies are charging for SMS it’s because they know that people like you are locked in.
And I’m not blaming you, because it’s hard when you have to change how you communicate, especially when a lot of the people around you are set in their ways.
Nah I obviously use messengers whenever possible :D
Because they can, simple as that. Or well, could. I don’t think I have sent a single text message in a solid decade now, and received only 2FA messages and pickup codes for storage boxes when something was delivered while I wasn’t home.
I really thought SMS is a remnant of the past at this point, just like fax systems. Working for legacy purposes, nothing more.
Are you kidding? Everyone I know, even the kids, prefer sms. You can answer when and/or if you have time or feel like it
They are expensive? I pay 10 euros a month and that includes 500 SMS messages and 100 MMS ones along with call time and Internet that I have never exceeded so I haven’t checked how much it is.
I’d argue 10 bucks for that amount of messages is expensive. That’s roughly 2 cents for 1 message. A text is so miniscule in the grand scheme of data being passed back and forth between the phone and a cell tower, you should be getting unlimited messages for $10 bucks. Of course corpos will argue against this
It was expensive before because it’s a supreme form of communication: don’t need both parties to be online and vacant, conveys complex info in a succint form (think numbers, adresses) that’s saved on both parties’ phones like notes for later, have an option to pay for another party to answer you, could be printed and sent in secret when there’s a meeting or a lesson (with physical buttons most could’ve printed a message under the table) and it kinda had it’s own culture, with basic emoticons and shorthands for words - even if being far from how popular it became in Japan and in pager’s times.
Right now SMS messages aren’t used that much by individuals since it was killed by the internet+messengers+touchscreens trio so they charge extra to milk those who happen to need that. A lot of carriers at my place provide subscription plans with minutes and gigabytes, with SMS as additional paid package or with a ridiculous price for every message.
But they don’t actually earn much here, even if they charge a whopping lot. SMS providers get fed by commercial contracts with services who notify you of delivery, send you verification codes and show you your CC balance. Signal, the messenger, started to look into phone number-less accounts because their non-profit is tired to shoulder the price they need to pay for just an SMS per login. Some services now call instead of texting you and make you write the last numbers of the phone to verify your identity, because it’s cheaper for now.
I feel kinda nostalgic of times when it was popular and carriers introduced special plans for messaging enthusiasts. I hate people calling for every small thing and I’m tired of checking multiple internet channels of information. With SMS it all was simple and direct.
originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 3 weeks ago
its crazier than you think... the original sms messaging was sent over an already existent, in process data path.. they didnt really have to add much to the system to accommodate it, yet charged an obscene amount per message
the answer is simple; because they can
AlternatePersonMan@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Messages went from $.05, to $.10, to $.20 to send and receive. That was in the span of three years. All of the companies said it wasn’t collision. They just happened to arrive upon massive increases separately.
If I recall, one of the CEOs said “We’re raising the prices to save customers money. This way they’ll be an unlimited plan”
The telcos should have been broken up then. Instead we’ve seen even more mergers.
phoneymouse@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
They fucked themselves. It became more worthwhile to just use data.
BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
You had to pay to receive? wtf.gif
So some rando could ruin you by sending a bazillion SMS messages?
Jessica@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
I know you meant collusion, but in case anyone else didn’t, it’s not collision.
Maeve@kbin.social 3 weeks ago
Where is this?
GBU_28@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Probably trying to get the last juice to squeeze as more and more traffic moves to web based messaging
BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
It still does.
SMS is sent within unassigned space within management frames.
Cell works kind of like ATM - Asynchronous Transfer Mode, which unlike packet-switched networks, continually transmits frames (even empty ones), as a means of ensuring stable, performant delivery.
Like ATM, cell kind of does the same thing (that is, when it makes a connection).
Within those frames are segments which are allocated for different purposes, someone got the great idea to transmit buts within a segment that wasn’t yet assigned to anything by the standard.
Those segments can hold… 160 characters (IIRC), and for technical reasons, this became 140 characters (again, IIRC).
So whenever your phone pings a tower, those frames get sent. From a bare transmission perspective, there’s no additional cost. The cost is on the backend hardware that extracts the SMS and the routing of it. So there’s some cost, but at 10 cents per message, there’s got to be 9.9 cents of gross profit (just guessing).